The best image in tonight's instalment is of Lee Mack hanging upside-down from a pair of skis.

This is another episode that asks itself "What's the smallest space we could use for an entire 30 minutes?" before deciding to go with a cable car.

Lee, Lucy and Daisy go skiing and if you think their clothes look like they were found in the back room of a 1970s thrift shop, the set-up is even more old fashioned.

The cable car gets stuck (their fault, naturally) and there's an angry, heavily pregnant eastern European woman on board (Pooky Quesnel) who's about to go into labour. To add to the fun, Lucy has both her arms in plaster casts, which makes you wonder how she applied her eye make-up.

The one-liners ricochet around that cable car at such a rate that you'll probably forgive the predictability of their plight.

he big difference this time around is that Tim Vine has now left, meaning that Lee Mack has no comic foil. Tim's disappearance was explained early on in this episode as he is apparently on a work placement in Germany. Meanwhile Tim's sister Lucy (Sally Breton) had a dilemma when she ran over the rabbit of a client's daughter after a successful business meeting. As this was Not Going Out, Lucy did the most illogical thing namely to get Lee to return the body of the rabbit to its owner. However due to a number of misunderstandings, Lee ends up returning the wrong rabbit and so the usual string of comic capers begin.

To be fair, not much has changed in the world of Not Going Out and I have to say I really didn't miss Tim Vine all that much. I feel by this point Mack and Breton to have enough chemistry to carry a sitcom together and this episode really demonstrated it. Thankfully Katy Wix's Daisy is still around and in this first episode had some great one-liners though I'd like to see her be the focus of a few more storylines now she's one of the major players.

Not Going Out may not be the most original comedy around but there's no denying that it's still funny after six years. Mack knows how to both write and deliver a funny line while his two female co-stars are also excellent at bouncing of him. So far 2013 has been a dire year for UK sitcoms so I'm glad that there's finally something on TV that at least makes me laugh once in a while.

A welcome return for Lee Mack's likable sitcom, and veritable gag-alanche of pithy one-liners. When Lucy (Sally Bretton) attempts to secure a contract with a client at his house, she ends up accidentally running over his daughter's pet rabbit. It's just the start of a masterclass in situation escalation, encompassing kidnapping, hare-brained helpers ... and beating a second rabbit to death with a torch. "Hopefully, it had Duracell batteries in it. It's what the bunny would have wanted."

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: to lose one scene-stealing support player is unfortunate but to lose two could be considered careless. So can the sitcom that helped launch the career of Miranda Hart - and survived - pull off the same trick now Tim Vine is absent from the sixth series? All eyes are on Lee Mack, still firmly at the centre of this universe, with puns and misfortune whirling around him like dysfunctional satellites as Lucy (Sally Bretton) plays Watership Down with a brace of innocent rabbits and Daisy (Katy Wix) strides in to make matters worse.

At the launch of the sixth series of Not Going Out, its star Lee Mack said the absent Tim Vine - who played Tim, Not Going Out's good-natured voice of reason and a perfect foil for Mack - would be replaced by an "abstract concept". What he meant was there'd be a lot more plot and story to make up for the Vine-sized gap. You'll be able to see what he was getting at in a very farcical opening episode involving dead rabbits.

All the usual Not Going Out tent-poles are in place; the quick-fire gags at which Mack is the unsurpassable master, the silly situations (very silly, as it turns out) and the excellent Sally Bretton and Katy Wix as Lucy and Daisy. It's frantic, frequently funny and refreshingly unpretentious. But you'll miss Tim Vine. I do.

The return of Not Going Out

Lee Mack's Not Going Out returns to the BBC for its sixth series this evening, with an episode that proves there is life after Tim Vine...

Lee Mack's reliably straightforward sitcom returns for a sixth series with Lee reluctantly coming to the aid of flatmate Lucy after she runs over a potential client's pet rabbit. Complications follow in the form of mistaken identity, a troublemaking parrot and some car keys falling down a drain. It's nothing new, yet it feels oddly novel: long-running, über-traditional sitcoms are currently few and far between.

Judging by the first half of this opener, that might not seem like a great loss. Laboured witticisms come at the expense of proper dialogue, with jokes and puns of wildly varying quality crowbarred into the script at any opportunity. But in those moments when the action builds to almost perfectly constructed silliness, Mack's wooden acting, the stock plot, incessant recaps and broadly etched set-up (Tim Vine's exit from the show is explained with thundering lack of subtlety seconds in) start to gel. Nowadays, we might prefer our farce in more coherent and intelligent surroundings, but you'd have to be pretty serious about comedy to begrudge this steadfast sitcom its enduring success.

Lee Mack's gag-packed, innuendo-laden creation is now on its sixth series, and has been sold to 120 countries. Set in London's Docklands, it follows happy-go-lucky slacker Lee (Mack himself) who has a crush on his flatmate Lucy (Sally Bretton), while Katy Wix (Anna & Katy) plays their dim-witted hairdresser friend Daisy. This eight-part run is the first without Mack's co-star and punning partner Tim Vine and begins with head-hunter Lucy going for dinner at a client's house in an attempt to secure a lucrative contract.

Interview: Lee Mack

Is Lee Mack, one of TV's most quick-witted comics, as funny off stage as he is on?